The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

sling tv

For years, the growing number of video streaming services available to TV viewers has eaten away at the subscriber base for pay-TV services. Traditional cable providers have avoided disaster thus far because even if customers cancel their TV package they still need to purchase their internet access from somebody (and many of us don’t have a choice about where to buy it). But satellite providers like DirecTV and Dish face the looming threat of cord-cutting without anything to offer cord-cutters other than ugly roof decor. [More]

When people think of subscription streaming video services, Hulu is usually part of the discussion but is often treated as secondary to Netflix or Amazon Prime. Yet, despite this third-place image of Hulu, it may be the streaming service that is most likely to contribute to people cutting the cord with their cable provider. [More]

Millions of Americans have canceled their cable TV subscriptions in the last decade, choosing instead to get their video entertainment over the internet. A growing number of services have popped up in recent years that offer cable-like live-TV streaming for this audience: Sling TV, DirecTV Now, PlayStation Vue, YouTube TV, with Hulu planning to launch a competitor soon, and Comcast reportedly looking to get into the fray. Yet, despite the multiple options and the large potential market of cord-cutters and cord-nevers, these platforms have yet to win over the masses. [More]

Remember how Dish kind-of, sort-of, possibly-accidentally quietly announced it had new streaming hardware on the way? Well, that device — the AirTV player — is today finally a real thing, with a real price tag, that you can buy if you want. [More]

Millions of us have crossed the threshold where TV just comes from the internet now, and millions more are likely to follow in coming years. So it’s not really surprising that a traditional pay-TV company would be doubling down on selling access to its internet-delivered content… and its internet-connected delivery device. [More]

Comcast’s X1 platform is basically a fancy, cloud-based, internet-connected cable box. It may be able to run all kinds of apps, but at its core, it is the set-top device that Comcast pay-TV subscribers get to watch the TV channels that they pay Comcast for. So if your reaction to the news that it’s going to host a streaming pay-TV competitor directly is, “wait, what?!,” you are not alone. [More]

If you willingly — or were pushed to — update to Windows 10, you may have been missing your Sling TV app. That won’t be an issue anymore, as the cord-cutting service has launched a new app specifically for the operating system. [More]

Since Comcast began expanding its years-long “test” of data caps and overage fees, complaints to the FCC about these new limits have skyrocketed. And some streaming video companies say that data caps are causing customers to either limit their use or drop these services rather than risk paying a penalty for going over their monthly allotment. [More]

This morning, Dish Network and Viacom announced a contract multi-year renewal that keeps Viacom channels like Comedy Central, MTV, BET, and Nickelodeon on the satellite service, and will also add a number of Viacom-owned channels to Dish’s Sling TV streaming service. [More]

Since Dish’s Sling TV streaming service launched in 2015, there were two regularly repeated gripes from cord-cutters: That Sling didn’t provide online access to any of the major broadcast networks and that you were forced to only using Sling on a single device at any given time. Sling is now taking steps to address both of these issues, but will they be enough to offer a true cable replacement? [More]

There’s a rumble brewing in telecom town: Sling TV is accusing Comcast of keeping its ads off some NBC stations’ airwaves. Which is exactly what the big bad cable company in its recent marketing campaign would do, Dish Network-owned Sling says. [More]

Comcast is, by far, the biggest cable TV provider in the country, but its pay-TV numbers is sinking while its Internet user base grows. In an effort to sell some sort of TV service to this increasingly large segment of the market, the folks at Kabletown are testing an online-only live-TV service dubbed Stream. [More]

Are you piggybacking on the Netflix, HBO Go, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc, account of a friend or family member? A new report claims that you’re part of the 6% of U.S. households that are costing these companies $500 million in revenue this year. [More]

As a growing number of consumers drop — or never sign up for — traditional pay-TV services, it’s easy to point to Netflix as a big reason. And yet, Netflix and similar services don’t actually replace the TV experience, especially when it comes to sports. Newer offerings, like Sling TV and PlayStation Vue, replicate the live TV watching experience, but falter compared to traditional pay-TV when it comes to things like DVR functionality. What’s stopping the big players from offering an all-in-one online service now? [More]

While some still hold out hope for the pipe dream of a true a la carte pay-TV option where the customer only pays for the channels they want (but at a price that isn’t outrageous), pressure from new streaming services appears to be nudging at least one major cable provider to offer a more flexible plan to subscribers. [More]